Caroline West on the Future of Sustainable SFC

At analytica 2026 in Munich, Germany, LCGC International interviewed Caroline West from the University of Orleans on her presentation, “Supercritical fluid chromatography as a sustainable analytical method.”¹

In the interview clip, West answers the following questions:

• The greenness benefits of SFC are well established at the preparative scale — what are the key differences that have made demonstrating those same benefits at the analytical scale more challenging?
• You mention that improved instrumentation in the 2010s was critical to wider analytical SFC adoption — what further instrument design improvements are still needed, particularly to enable further miniaturization and column dimension reduction?

Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) has traditionally been valued within preparative laboratories, where its use of carbon dioxide–based mobile phases offers clear safety advantages and significant reductions in organic solvent consumption.² Although these benefits are well established in large‑scale applications, West explained that translating the same level of “greenness” to analytical‑scale workflows has historically been more complex.

Over the past decade, however, improvements in commercial instrumentation—especially those introduced during the 2010s—have driven dramatic growth in analytical SFC adoption. Enhanced system robustness, more versatile column technologies, and easier, more reliable coupling with mass spectrometry have broadened SFC’s relevance far beyond its early pharmaceutical roots. Today, it is being used to separate and analyze natural products, environmental contaminants, and even components of modern plastics. Although solvent savings are less dramatic at this smaller scale, West emphasized that sustainability gains still emerge in other meaningful ways, including extended column lifetimes, reduced waste streams, and the compatibility of SFC with efficient online sample‑preparation strategies.

In her interview, West also highlighted ongoing needs in instrument design. While analytical SFC systems have become more accessible, further miniaturization, improved flow control, and continued refinement of column formats will be essential to unlocking the method’s full potential. Such innovations could ultimately enable lower solvent usage, reduced operational costs, and greener, more compact analytical workflows.

Caroline West is a full professor in analytical chemistry at the University of Orleans, France. Her main scientific interests lie in the fundamentals of chromatographic selectivity, both in the achiral and chiral modes, mainly in SFC, but also in liquid chromatography (LC).

References

1. West, C. Supercritical fluid chromatography as a sustainable analytical method. Presented at analytica 2026, in Munich, Germany. https://analytica.de/en/event-program/conference/lecture/supercritical-fluid-chromatography-as-a-sustainable-analytical-method-15457/ (accessed 2026-03-26).
2. Matheson, A. Modern Supercritical Fluid Chromatography: An HPLC 2025 Video Interview with Caroline West; https://www.chromatographyonline.com/view/modern-supercritical-fluid-chromatography-an-hplc-2025-video-interview-with-caroline-west (accessed 2026-03-26).